07-28-2022 09:55 PM
My HVAC system is a high end Goodman 2-stage A/C, only a few years old. It was professionally installed.
I am very adept at electrical. I installed my NEST Thermostat myself in March of 2020. I added 3 temperature sensors so we could have it 'follow' us in the house. I set up programs to save energy. I then connected it to our local power company to take part in the 'energy rush' savings. It worked flawlessly for 16 months. We normally keep the house at 72 degrees with 40% humidity (but allowed it to shift up during 'away' times).
On July 9th, it went haywire. We came home, the house was at 85 degrees, and 65% humidity.
The A/C fan was running, but the system was not cooling. Out of desperation, I shut off the power and turned it back on, viola, the A/C started working again.
This happened again, every day from that forward (and just happened again an hour ago).
Every day the A/C works fine most of the day, then malfunctions, and I reset the power, and everything works perfectly.
I called out my regular A/C tech. He did verify that the wiring was correct, in fact, they could see the problem happening while they were there, and their words 'Something in the NEST is blocking the signal to the A/C'. He powered the system down and back on, and it worked fine. He said 'that proves it's your NEST'. $100 service call.
I pitched my NEST thermostat, grumbled about crap made in China only lasting a year, bought a new NEST. $200 upgrade.
Same day, the problem happened again, for the next week, the problem happened again every single day.
I called out a different A/C tech. This was a person who claimed to be a NEST expert. Once again, he verified the wiring was correct. Once again, the problem was happening while he was here, and he identified that something in the NEST was blocking the A/C. Like me, he powered it down, powered it up, and his meter immediately identified that the signal was no longer blocked. He once again, confirmed it was a problem in the NEST, telling the A/C to not 'cool', but to only run. (sort of like 'AirWave' mode). However, 'AirWave' was not indicated in the dashboard.
I called Google. Got some low level time waster, got nothing done. She had me turn off every single 'intelligent' feature in my NEST, and promised that would fix my problem. (What a dumb fix). So now my NEST is basically a 'dumb' thermostat.
She was far more concerned about me doing a survey than fixing my problem.
The problem continued. Every single day since July 9th, haven't had a single day where it hasn't happened.
A few days later, I called my power company, and removed their access to my NEST. They hit me with a penalty for exiting the program. But they did remove their access. $125 penalty for leaving the program.
I then did a factory reset on my NEST to be sure I had all of my power companies 'fingers' out of the system.
I made sure all 'intelligent' features were off. No longer using any of my additional sensors, not using 'away' mode, not using 'airwave', all of the 'learning' features are disabled. It's just a 'dumb' thermostat now.
Problem happened again that same day.
The problem continues to happen every day. Every day, the NEST will tell the A/C to shut down (much like 'AirWave' mode), and we notice it when the house temp gets high humidity and high temps. We power down the system, power it up and it works fine.
Note, it never tells us it's in 'AirWave' when this happens, but it behaves as if it is.
Where do I even go from here? Everyone is pointing at Google, but Google wants no responsibility in this.
I've already paid for 2 service calls. 2 x $100
I've paid for a new NEST $200
I've paid a penalty $125 with my power company for getting out of the energy program.
What do I do next? I've already paid out $525 to get this problem stopped, and I'm just in a finger pointing game.